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OCRegister: 6 Days Without Afflicting the Comfortable

Orange County Register Publisher Aaron Kushner admonished his newsroom staff a week or so ago that their job was NOT to “afflict the comfortable” in their reporting. Today, Voice of OC reporter Adam Elmahrek provides us with the perspective of a leading ethicist on Anaheim Councilman Jordan Brandman’s $24,000 Wiki-Report prepared for former Clerk Recorder Tom Daly. For clarification, Jordan is one of the “comfortable” that Kushner has vowed to protect in blocking both paid advertising and apparently news coverage from affliction.

In the Voice of OC Report (here) Elmahrek quotes Judy Nadler, senior fellow at the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics:

“I have no idea how Orange County operates, but if I were presented with this as a public official, I would not be inclined to accept it as it is. Because its something that frankly a high school intern could have done, anyone could have done,” Nadler said. “I’m just really curious about what Orange County has as its standards. I’d be really surprised and disappointed to see if you could submit anything you want.”

As with the many real investigative stories that we get from Voice of OC, Elmahrek continues to deliver the drip-drip of damning revelations. For the OCRegister’s part, we are still waiting for them to even mention the fact that this story even exists, much less provide us with any in-depth investigative reporting that Kushner has promised his newly enhanced investigative news team would deliver. Rather than hold our breath and pass out while we wait for the Kushner’s forces to notice a news story, we have decided to implement our OCRegister Days Without Affliction counter.

Similar to a Days Without an Accident sign posted in an employee break room; we’ll keep it running until the OCRegister staff have an accident and decide to afflict one of the comfortable elected officials operating under the protection of the Orange County Business Council.